The last 4 months have been hectic getting The Global Web Index off the ground.
It is clear from the many meetings, presentations and discussions, that there is a major demand for this product. This is obviously very exciting for us here at Trendstream and confirms why we got this off the ground. The more we meet people the more clarification we have on why this is needed:
The global perspective is crucial: A single source global viewpoint is more and more crucial for all companies, but currently this is lacking. Existing insight tools were developed in the local market, tradtional media phase of advertising and marketing cycle and don’t provide the perspective needed in a world of global platforms and content.
In a data heavy world we need explanation: Today we have more data than we know what to do with – buzz tracking, analytics and ad server data to name just a few sources. However it is all observation, all behaviour. What is missing is the explanation – why do people do things, what else do they do – their lives. This we currently don’t know, but need to know.
Difficult to prove importance and scale of social media: We all know social media is a big deal, but currently it’s difficult to prove and hard justify investments, as current research provides no research and no perspective on it and how it scales versus traditional online and offline.
Moving away from the site model: As consumers become creators and content becomes portable, the importance of destination sites, that are so well tracked currently, is diminishing. We are moving towards a few key socially driven platforms and the content, stories that move around them. This means understanding broad behaviour and motivations is becoming more important to creating truely great marketing communications and web products and services.
Broad focus is key: In a world of ultra granular data, it is often impossible to get the big picture we need to build strategy, thinking and delivering what consumers want online. For example, I have very detailed numbers on how many people engage my group on Facebook and what they talk about, but I can’t fit this into the big picture of their lives. Broad data is needed for context and to understand how these trends fit into the big picture.
Everybody has a stake in social media: We’ve had huge interest from media agencies, creative agencies, web agencies, social media specilists, PR agencies, analysts, marketers and web properties. Its an open field.
The survey is now set and going into field and the analysis platform is being put together. The platform is open for data testing by launch clients from the end of May and live data at the end of June. If you want to get involved as a launch client now and be part of the platform testing process please let us know.
We look forward to demonstrating the live data on a public launch in June. Stay posted for the webinars and live event.
